UK consultant scoops top design award for Heston kitchen

Sefton Horn Winch’s Gareth Sefton has won the ‘FCSI EAME Region Design in Excellence Award’ for his work on Heston Blumenthal’s Perfectionists’ Café at Heathrow Airport.

Sefton worked with The Fat Duck executive chef, Ashley Palmer-Watts, to develop the designs for the Terminal 2 restaurant, which opened in the middle of last year.

The Perfectionists’ Cafe presents a selection of popular UK dishes and favourites of the busy traveller — dishes that by their very nature tend to be best cooked at speed. An estimated 55,000 passengers arrive and depart from the terminal every day, so the kitchen and preparation areas have been designed to enable restaurant staff to deliver top-flight cuisine, quickly and efficiently.

The site contains Heathrow’s first wood-burning oven as well as a series of bespoke equipment designed to deliver a compelling menu.

The café takes inspiration from Heston’s ‘In Search of Perfection’ television programmes and the ‘In Search of Perfection’ book series in which the Michelin starred chef explored and reinvented Britain’s favourite dishes through his unique, creative approach.

Sefton shared this year’s award with FCSI member Promoz Cernigoj, who impressed the judges with his Tamnjam project.

It is the second time that Sefton has won the award, having collected the same accolade at the 2011 conference in Stockholm conference. Incidentally that was also for a Heston Blumenthal project: ‘Dinner by Heston Blumenthal’.

Sefton was unavailable to attend last week’s FCSI conference so his award was collected by colleague Derek White on his behalf.

Elsewhere, Winterhalter picked up the Manufacturer’s award for its PT pass-through dishwasher, while the ifetime achievement award was given to Vic Laws MBE FCSI.